The Terrapin football team’s game against N.C. State had just ended when the players started thinking about bowl destinations.
The chatter started while walking off the field and continued into the locker room.
“Pretty much everybody told Coach Friedgen right after the game at N.C. State that we all wanted to go to San Francisco,” redshirt junior linebacker Erin Henderson said. “That was the whole team in the locker room. That’s where everybody wanted to go for the most part.”
The Terps got their wish, as they will face Oregon State on Dec. 28 in the Emerald Bowl at AT&T Park in San Francisco. While other possible destinations included Charlotte, N.C. and Boise, Idaho, most of the Terps had the Napa Valley bowl pegged as their No. 1 choice of bowlsa.
“I think a lot of guys are excited about the San Francisco atmosphere,” senior offensive lineman Andrew Crummey said. “Being on the West Coast, going somewhere different, somewhere new.”
The Terps (6-6, 3-5 ACC) snuck into the bowl game with their 37-0 thrashing of N.C. State in the regular-season finale. They then leapfrogged Georgia Tech (7-5) in the bowl hierarchy to snag a bid in the Emerald Bowl.
Oregon State (8-4, 6-3 Pac 10) finished third in its conference and has won five of its past six games.
Is this the best the Terps could ask for? They are playing in a nice city against an upstart program that competes in a premier conference, rather than, say, against Fresno State in the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise.
“I think so,” coach Ralph Friedgen said. “This is the bowl our kids wanted to go to. I think they’re very, very excited about it. I’m very appreciative of the bowl selecting us. Hopefully we’ll go out there and play well, and hopefully we’ll bring a lot of fans [and] continue the reputation we have of bringing people to bowl games.
“I think it’s part of their education, too,” Friedgen continued. “How many times are a lot of these kids gonna get out to San Francisco and see how part of the country lives that they’re unaware of? That’s one of the neat things about playing college football. You get to experience a lot of different things that a normal student wouldn’t get to experience.”
Oregon State, on the other hand, is crying “foul” – at least its fans are.
Many feel the Beavers played well enough this season, especially down the stretch, to earn the opportunity to play in a better bowl game. The Emerald Bowl is considered fourth on the Pac-10 bowl ladder.
The Beaver fans are livid with the BCS for not giving Arizona State a spot in one of the NCAA’s top bowl games. Had the Sun Devils been invited to play in a BCS game, every other Pac-10 team would have been bumped up a spot, meaning more money and more exposure for the Beavers.
Then the Sun Bowl passed on Oregon State because the Beavers played there last year. Fans have bombarded the Oregon State message boards displeased not only that they are playing in the Emerald Bowl, but also that they are playing the Terps, who, on paper, are nothing special.
“Every other Pac-10 team is playing a team with nine or more wins except us,” one fan wrote in a thread titled ‘Maryland is 6-6’. “I find that strange considering we are ranked third in the Pac. Not saying anything bad on Maryland, just think this is a very strange match.”
“Yeah, they are pissed,” quarterback Chris Turner said. “It hasn’t screwed us yet. I’m indifferent at this point.”
Nationally, this year’s BCS schedule has been the subject of controversy in the sports world since Sunday.
“You don’t want to know my thoughts,” Friedgen said. “How do you keep a team like Missouri out of the BCS? I don’t know how you do that. I don’t know how fair it is, but that’s not gonna change. My opinion is not gonna change it. Until the powers to be want to change it, it’s gonna be the way that it is. I don’t frustrate myself with it.”
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Henderson said. “And I know guys at Ohio State and LSU – I’ve talked to them – and they don’t seem to have a problem with it right now either. So it is what it is, and I think that’s something that they’re gonna continue to debate for a long time, but I don’t think it’s ever gonna change.”
One of the changes analysts and fans have been calling for is a playoff system. But that’s not entirely plausible, Crummey said.
“There’s a huge problem with the playoff: There’s too many games,” he said. “You got 12 already, you put a playoff system in with four games, you got a 16-game season. That’s an NFL season. College can’t handle that. You can’t subject college players to that kind of thing without paying them, without giving them any kind of retribution. There’s no way to justify – you can’t say, ‘Oh well, you can miss exams because we’re gonna do a playoff system now.’
“You take two games off and give us a 10-game season and then put a three-game playoff, then maybe, but there’s already a limit of what you can ask a college program to do, what you can ask a college player to go through without some kind of compensation. I don’t think there will be a playoff season, and I think if they ever try to implement it, they’ll have to shorten the regular season, which they won’t do.”
For the Terps, the BCS isn’t something they have to deal with this year. Maybe so in future years, but right now it’s all about Oregon State and the Emerald Bowl.
“A bowl game is rewarding,” wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey said. “We’re happy to go to San Francisco; it’s something new, something different. For us, we just know it’s an opportunity to leave with a winning season.”
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